The Road Not Taken
by Cutie Emo Panda
Summary: At the crossroads, we watched our paths diverge...


****I promise you I'm still active and WILL update The Fray in hopefully a week or less.

**The Road Not Taken**

On that night, we wanted something fast. On that night, we all wanted something quick… swift… speedy. But none of us wanted it to be hasty. We had spent a year – perhaps it was longer, none of us were really counting – talking, meeting in the dark, and whispering our thoughts to each other. There were times when someone would check on us to be sure we were still in our beds. One of us would sometimes sit up in the dark, to give them something to look at. As our sunken eyes stared out, and our translucent skin glowed, we would smile like a skeleton.

"_The drip is keeping me up."_

And then they would walk in, tap the IV a few times, smile, and leave.

One of us was coming back from her treatment. Dark eyes never looked so pale. When she sat back onto her bed, the rest of us watched as she cried. Her sobs were choppy and weighted, her body shook like a bare tree, and I thought that she may just fall apart.

"_They tell me a year."_

And we all knew that we would do it soon.

On that night, we could not believe we would do it. How cold the metal felt against our shaking hands.

"_Be careful_, _you might set it off_."

We handled it with care, passing it around so that each of us could feel how heavy it was. Then we would all look inside it, running a finger against each slot. We would count from one till six. And with each number, we would choose which we would like to have.

"_It was my lucky number." _

"_That was the age I last remember truly smiling." _

She decided she would take most of the burden, we knew her palms were clammy, and we all thought that made her all the more brave.

One of us suggested Shakespeare to read just before; they had wanted to read that famous monologue from Hamlet. But we all refused. One of us suggested E.E Cummings. That was also refused. One of us said the bible, and I said I was atheist. One of us said J.K. Rowling, and one of us preferred Tolkien. Then there was Harper Lee, Balzac, C.S. Lewis, Roald Dahl, Wordsworth, Dickens, William Faulkner, Hemingway, Orwell, Mark Twain, and Edgar Allen Poe's Alone.

"_But we aren't alone_," She had said.

And so she suggested Robert Frost. We all let her, because she would be the one holding the gun.

On that night, we decided on a time. Upon long discussions, we all said that we liked three o' clock. There was no special reason, simply that we liked it. And when some of us started to cry, and felt as though their stomachs suddenly disappeared, the rest of us held each other and whispered little hymns we sometimes heard around the holidays.

"_It can't hurt anymore than we hurt now." _And we knew that they were right.

Most of us always thought that there would be a day we could run around with bare feet. Most of us still thought that. But now as the seconds grew closer, there were doubts. We all could see it as we stared into each other's eyes. There was a hollowness to the sound when the old grandfather clock struck three times. Our mouths all went dry. It was only one bottle of beer we stole to pass around, just to keep our nerves loose. Most of us still had our doubts.

On this night, "_Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both. And be one traveler, long I stood, and looked down one as far as I could –__to where it bent in the undergrowth." _

We watched as the first and second of us dropped. They had come to the hospital together, brother and sister coming to share the same fate.

"_Then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim_."

When the third of us fell, biting her tongue, tears streaming down her face, repeating that it was lucky. Now the nurses would be coming.

"_Because it was grassy and wanted wear, though as for that the passing there – had worn them really about the same."_

The fourth of us fell, holding still that small doubt.

"_And both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I marked the first for another day!"_

The tears that filled her eyes as she stared into mine grew. Her teeth were chattering and her frail hands looked so helpless around the handle of the gun. Unconsciously, I grabbed her arm, afraid that she may just disappear. Slowly lifting it up to my temple, I gave her a grim smile. I told her silently that it would be alright, that we would be alright. She was shaking.

"_Yet knowing how way leads to way, I doubted if I should ever come back." _

"_I'll be waiting for you."_

And with her poem left unfinished, she cried out as she fell too. Red tears staining the floor.

At the crossroads, we met there, smiling at one another. At the crossroads we were met with the black.

"_Did I keep you waiting long?" _

And I kissed her forehead. _"Of course not."_

At the crossroads, we saw as our roads diverged. And we walk down one, maybe with an unneeded patience. And that was what made all the difference.

**The End**

So I'm swamped with more work since it midterms :P But I recently had a creative writing assignment in English class that I absolutely adored writing ^^ I changed it up a bit to fit with an Ichiruki theme... but only really lightly. I didn't really have a good Halloween story to dish out so I decided dark-esque was close enough...

The lines are taken directly from _The Road Not Taken _by Robert Frost, one of my all time favorite poets!

But yes, I'm not giving up on The Fray just yet ;) So please be patient.

Tell me what you think of this! Please **review **if you can!


End file.
